South Florida Water Management District workers quickly stepped in to close a breach in the J.W. Corbett Wildlife Management Area berm that was spilling into a western area of the Indian Trail Improvement District last week.
The SFWMD was notified Thursday, Oct. 27 about a 60-foot-wide, 5-foot-deep breach in an earthen berm that separates the southwestern corner of Corbett, controlled by the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission, from an ITID outfall canal. An estimated 2,000 cubic yards of dirt was moved into the canal.
The SFWMD had crews and equipment, including a long-neck excavator, at the area by Sunday and had plugged the berm by Monday, but continued work reinforcing the area over the past week, and restoring a portion of an ITID outfall canal near the L-8 Canal where dirt from the berm had washed in and was impeding water flow, according to SFWMD representative Randy Smith.
“There was more collapse that was discovered while we were out there, so it has made the job a little bit bigger,” Smith told the Town-Crier on Tuesday. “Right now, we’re getting to the point where we have already fixed all of the breached area of the berm. Now we’re just shoaling; basically it’s just dirt that washes down, so we have to take heavy equipment and scoop it out and put it on the bank and use it where we need to, but you have to get it out of the canal so it can continue to flow. Otherwise the sediment starts to jam everything up.”
Smith said that the SFWMD will continue with sediment cleanup, and then bring in riprap to reinforce the earthen structure and finish it with sod.
“The sod is what helps with the integrity of the earthen part of it,” he said. “We’re probably looking for at least the rest of this week and probably a couple of days into next week to complete it.”
Smith said no homes were in danger from the breach, which was several miles west of a portion of the levee that was identified for hardening after a near-breach during Tropical Storm Isaac flooding in 2012. That area has undergone $4 million in repairs from state financing and awaits another $3 million to complete the work.
“That’s what we call the Corbett levee, and that is a legitimate levee, where what we’re dealing with out in Indian Trail now is the berm, which is smaller,” he said. “This is unrelated to the big Corbett levee.”
He added that the SFWMD is calculating how much water escaped during the breach. “We will have a really good estimate of how much water was released,” Smith said.
Although the berm is owned by ITID, Smith said the SFWMD was prepared to repair it, which would have taken much longer for ITID to do.
“We’ve got the staff and the heavy equipment, because this is what we do,” he said. “We repair things every day from all the 2,000 miles of canals that the water management district has. We have a lot of the materials. It was an earthen berm. Other than the rocks that we brought in, we didn’t have to bring in fill dirt.”
ITID Manager Jim Shallman said that the breach was far away from any homes.
He credited the SFWMD for responding quickly.
“The only question was really environmental, and Indian Trail obviously cares about that, but our residents were never in any danger,” Shallman said. “Initially, our response was to just let it drain out and fix it afterward, because we don’t have the equipment, and it would have taken probably six or seven days to get a long-neck excavator.”
He was glad to have the SFWMD step in.
“Basically, it was in their interest to stop it sooner, rather than later,” Shallman said. “It was draining into the L-8 and other issues came up… We’re grateful for the help. I have nothing but good things to say about the South Florida Water Management District.”
